My Hard Drive vs. PartitionMagic

TheShrike · 24th May 2002

I had a full hard drive which I foolishly tried to modify using Partitionmagic 7.0, ya know, just to be tweaky. I decided that since the partition on that drive was needlessly set to be extended, I'd change it to primary. That went fine. Then I decided that now, since it was primary, I'd use up that 7.4 megs of unallocated space before it. Move it down 7.4 megs and resize it to take the entire hard drive. All the steps went fine until "Move Data". Then PM crashed at 14%.

Well, its completely my mistake, but I REALLY dont want to pay for it with 70 gigs of useful data. fortunately, no programs ran off that drive, it was just storage. So I need to find a solution.

Does anybody know if PM has a way to recover the data, either by recontinuing the process or some other way? If not, then is there any way to format the drive without losing data? If not, then if I do a "quick", non-secure format, will an undelete program work in resotring at least the majority of my files? If not, then what else can I do short of contacting an expensive data recovery service?

I'm not sure what system data would be relevant to this problem, so here's some random stuff:
AMD Athlon 1G w/512megs of RAM running Windows XP
Western Digital 120 Gigabyte (sorta, its decimal only) Caviar HD
Western Digital 80 Gigabyte Caviar HD (this is the ******* up one)

BillyBob · 24th May 2002

Well, its completely my mistake

First off. Thank you for being honset. And letting us know what you did.

I decided that since the partition on that drive was needlessly set to be extended, I'd change it to primary.

I assume we are discussing the 2nd HD.

Why do you say it was needlessly set as extended and change it to primary ?

The only HD that requires a primary partiton on it is the 1st one on the system. Only under special circumstances does this need to be changed.

Adding an HD with or changing the partition on the 2nd HD to a primary ( if it was extended ) will mess up all drive letter asignments if the 1st HD had more than one partition on it.

For example if the 1st was C: D: E: it would now be C: E: F: as the Primary on the 2nd would now become D:

Having a Primary partition on the 2nd HD is not wrong as long as things are set up to begin with that way. But to change it after can raise problems.

I'd use up that 7.4 megs of unallocated space before it.

That * may be * the part that did you in.

Most HDs do have either a 3.9 or 7.8 meg space at the beginning. I believe it is used by the HD or the system or both. I am just not sure just what it is but there is a reason fo it. And it must be there.

Also that is where Boot Magic was installed when I had it. ( in the 7.8meg spot ) of the 1st HD.

Some of my HDs have that space at the beginning and the end.

I have no idea what this 40gig HD looks like in PM as I used the WD disk to set it up. But I will take a look see and come back.

Edit and add.

I just took a peek and this HD does not have the free space at the beginng or end. It may be that the others were set up with PM and this one was not.

BillyBob

TheShrike · 25th May 2002

The partition I wanted to change into a primary partition is already set as drive D. Or it was while it was still recognized as a formatted partition. However, though I appreciate the advice (I'm never gonna try needless changes with the devil-software again), you didn't answer my question.

Is there any way to recover my files from a drive that is now, apparently, unformatted, using PM or an undelete function after a quick format or some other weird formatting device? I don't want to try anything unless someone can tell me it will work.

Rancher · 27th May 2002

Remove the skerud up drive from the puter. Use another hard drive, anything will do, load winxp on this drive. Now jump the old drive to "slave" & attach to primary or secondary if possible & reboot. You should be able to "see" your data in windows explorer